Ah, to feel alive…
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Yuu Kirihara
Translation/Adaptation: N/A
What They Say:
A plump-breasted flower petal to soothe you at work. ♥
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Originally serialized in Comic X-Eros #45, Work Relationship is a twenty-page story from Yuu Kirihara, who makes his debut with this piece. There’s a lot to like with his work here in a general sense as the backgrounds are good when used and I like the character design for the Yume since they make it clear she’s “plain” from the start and they don’t try to turn her into a sex bomb once out of the usual place. There’s an appeal with someone that looks like a regular person, manga-style of course, as opposed to drop dead gorgeous characters running around being called plain. The only area I didn’t care too much for is that they seem to put the male perspective in a few different ways, with a lot of early material in third person – which just looks awkward – and then some first person before going to your normal perspective. There’s just a lack of continuity in presentation that way.
The story for this one centers around a young woman that works in an office whose known as Matsuoka. As the weekend is about to hit, one of the guys jokes about taking her out for dinner since she’s essentially easier pickings combined with sizable breasts that make her appealing physically enough for them. This gets a blase response from fellow co-worker Nishimura, but mostly because he knows the truth in that she’ll be spending time with him instead. Which is awkward since he’s married and got a kid. But, as he points out, his wife is only interested in being a mom at this point and that’s dominated everything. Not that it makes it right, but it’s always interesting to see how the writers come up with justifications for different things.
As it turns out, Nishimura accidentally came across Matsuoka recently when he visited a “specialty shop” to get some release and discovered that she works there after office hours. He’s been coming back ever since as they keep it a secret at work and she goes all in on her night job in a big way. It’s never said that it’s out of fear of him saying anything but rather that she just really enjoys this particular line of night work. The bulk of the book is with the together after work where she’s doing everything she can to please him. Kirihara works this very well as her design is great, keeping to the “plain” approach but also exhibiting her natural sexuality, and while there’s a lot of traditional material here it’s all presented very well. We only get one internal shot, thankfully, and there are some fun angles at times, such as when he’s behind her alongside the bed as it’s almost like a bird’s eye view. The sex scenes may not be the hottest things in the world but they’re pretty good and show a lot of promise in general as we get a playful kind of story that avoids anything really disturbing.
In Summary
Work Relationship is fairly straightforward material here but it has a certain charm about it that works better than it should. Yume’s character is definitely fun as we get the two personalities depending on where she is and there’s something unusual about her night work personality that I can’t quite put my finger on. Kirihara’s style is pretty good overall and I can see how they’ll find their own unique style more as time goes on as I really like how Yume is presented. Mostly, just some of the angles and perspectives frustrated me at times with what they were doing. But as an opening work it’s one that sets a good tone and has me curious to see what else they’ll be doing.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: FAKKU
Release Date: August 24th, 2016
MSRP: FAKKU Subscription
